UVic Physics and Astronomy Professor and IPP Research Scientist Robert McPherson Elected ATLAS Deputy Spokesperson
Robert McPherson of the University of Victoria Physics and Astronomy and Institute of Particle Physics has been selected as the Deputy Spokesperson of the ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The ATLAS Collaboration Board elected McPherson at its meeting in Geneva on October 10, 2014.
ATLAS is a 3000-person strong scientific collaboration which discovered the Higgs Boson in 2012. ATLAS is currently upgrading its capabilities to run at double the energy and rates from 2015—2018. “This is an exciting time in particle physics,” said McPherson. “The Higgs observation was an appetizer that demonstrates the capabilities of ATLAS and the LHC, and our upcoming run will finally allow us to probe the scales where we expect to make the breakthrough discoveries needed to understand how energy gained mass to become matter in the early universe.”
The Deputy Spokesperson position effectively titles McPherson the vice president of ATLAS. In this position, McPherson will work with the Spokesperson to oversee all aspects of ATLAS, ranging from detector and computing operations, R&D for detector upgrades, and physics analysis. McPherson will also managing the relationship between ATLAS and international funding agencies. The spokesperson is physicist Dave Charlton from the University of Birmingham.
Canada has been part of ATLAS and the LHC since 1992, with the ATLAS involvement pioneered by UVic Physics and Astronomy professor Michel Lefebvre and the LHC particle accelerator contributions led by TRIUMF under then director Alan Astbury. The first LHC run from 2010—2013, at about half the LHC design energy and data-taking rate, was highlighted by the Higgs Boson discovery which led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. After a two year shutdown for detector and accelerator consolidation, the LHC and ATLAS are poised to resume operation in March 2015 at the full LHC design energy and rate, opening up a new window on our understanding of the fundamental make-up of the universe.
Congratulations, Rob!
For further information see:
- CERN and the LHC: http://home.web.cern.ch/
- ATLAS: http://atlas.ch/
- University of Victoria Particle Physics: https://www.uvic.ca/science/physics/vispa/
- Institute of Particle Physics: http://www.ipp.ca/